


Through A Glass, Darkly

by GoSherlocked



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: EMP, Extended Mind Palace, His Last Vow, Hurt/Comfort, John's POV, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Sherlock's POV, The Abombinable Bride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 15:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9078583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoSherlocked/pseuds/GoSherlocked
Summary: My fic about the Extended Mind Palace Theory - what if Sherlock had never woken after the gunshot? And what if John in the meantime had been pretty damn smart? A Victorian 21st century journey, accompanied by some quotes from 13 Corinthians. 
Thanks to the amazing EMP bunch at tumblr: ebaeschnbliah, isitandwonder, loveismyrevolution, tjlcisthenewsexy, monikakrasnorada, the-7-percent-solution, tendergingergirl, and longsnowmoon5.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Schmiezi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schmiezi/gifts).



**For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:  
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  
(1 Corinthians, 13:12)**  
   
   
It comes as a surprise. Not that she is clad all in black, holding a silenced gun – Walther PPK, his mind palace willingly provides – small smile playing around her lips. Not that she shoots him. Not that she apologises for doing so although she is not sorry. Not really.   
Nothing of this comes as a surprise.   
But he should have known. He should have seen it coming.   
He opens a drawer in the intricately decorated filing cabinet and takes out his book of lists. He likes making lists. He has one about the shortcomings of his own mother and he also kept the one of people who hated Mary – he really should have seen it coming – and now he looks at a new one, captioned:   
What I should have seen and did not see.   
Excellent memory.   
Instant recognition of skip code.   
Sangfroid in front of a wedding party, emanating pure hatred.  
He remembers his first deductions about her, words swirling in front of his face, dissolving into the darkness until only one of them remains. LIAR.   
He saw but he did not observe.   
   
He is so still. This is so very wrong. He needs to be like quicksilver, talking all the time, running around with his big coat billowing behind him, using his long, elegant hands to emphasise his deductions, letting his voice rumble deeply or smack his lip to stress the plosive at the end of a word.  
This is not Sherlock but a statue, attached to monitors and IV lines disappearing into various parts of his body.   
John should be able to distance himself, he is a professional after all, but this is different. This time he is just John Watson, not an army doctor, not a GP, just John Watson, a friend.   
The friend.  
‘I’ve just got one.’  
   
After having walked through the various rooms of his mind palace, Sherlock sits down in the chair before the fireplace. It is not the real one made by the French-Swiss designer whose name he has deleted but a classic Chesterfield, bottle-green leather with buttons, sturdily built. A piece of furniture that belongs in, say, a late-Victorian bachelor gentleman’s home.   
He stretches his legs towards the fireplace, lights his pipe – no smoking prohibitions here, tobacco not being a forbidden substance then – and starts puffing little clouds towards the smoke-darkened ceiling. Better than any nicotine patch. And there is morphine and cocaine, he thinks dreamily, available from any good chemist, not something to be acquired illegally in filth-ridden alleys or behind rusty warehouse containers.   
‘Stop being sentimental’ he tells himself, ‘there is work to do.’   
So Mary is a liar after all. Her stance, her cold demeanour, the precision of her shot – not killing him at once, not shooting him in the head because, this way, it would buy her time to escape. John would care for him, try to save his life, call an ambulance instead of running behind the killer – all this tells him she must be a professional, maybe a secret agent gone rogue, acquainted with stealthy operations, changing identities, playing a part, shooting a gun.   
   
The doctors are not sure what is going on. Sherlock’s vitals are good, no danger there. He is running a fever, true, which might be expected in cases of massive internal injuries, and there was the flatline and the consumption of hard drugs on the day of the shooting but they still seem to be baffled.   
So is John, at least from a medical point of view. As long as there is no brain damage – and John really hopes there is not and actually Sherlock’s heart did not stop that long to suggest such an assumption – he should have woken up by now.   
But he does not.   
   
His thinking goes fine until suddenly, out of the blue, just like that, John’s face appears before him. He should not have thought of John, not now, not when he is trying to work, to make sense of all this.   
But there he is. Brave, sarcastic, tough, caring John who was shocked at Sherlock’s callousness towards Janine, human error and all that crap, assuming that this is how Sherlock thinks about love although it is not but John may never know.   
John’s face gets bigger and bigger, blotting out the other chair, the fireplace, the whole cosy late-Victorian gentleman’s room to swallow him whole.   
   
Mary comes early in the morning. She is worried, standing beside the bed and carefully touching Sherlock’s shoulder. Biting her lip. Very quiet and subdued. John is glad to see her but she leaves sooner than expected, talking about having to buy some baby things.   
There is something he cannot put his finger on, something nagging at him while he watches her disappearing from the hospital lobby.   
When he comes back into the room, he realises what it is. The smell, a hint of her perfume. Claire de la Lune.   
John sits on the chair beside the bed and remembers the moment in the office, Janine lying on the floor, unconscious, Sherlock running around wildly, deducing the temperature of  a chair. And a perfume. John himself saying, ’Mary wears it’. And Sherlock retorting, ‘No, not Mary. Somebody else.’  
   
When he comes to, the fire has gone out and the room is uncomfortably cold; the pipe lying on the well-worn burgundy red carpet. He sits up, remembers what he saw last before he slept, faded, dissolved, whatever describes his condition best.   
Ah, yes, John’s face. John.   
He gets up and starts pacing the cold room, hands in pockets, no noise from the outside, no horses' hooves on the cobbles, no cries of street vendors, no shrill whistles of the city’s policemen. Must be late at night then.    
He remembers the dungeon-like padded cell and chained Moriarty - how very Victorian - how much he hated Moriarty drooling over him, the horrible stench of his breath, his flamingly insane eyes but, mad as he may be, it was he who gave Sherlock what he needed – an incentive to live.   
That wife.   
But John married that wife.   
There is the rub - no idea who said that but it seems strangely fitting.   
John married her and they are expecting a child.   
Sherlock suddenly remembers John’s face in the restaurant, not the horrible moustache or the anger but the eyes, dead eyes, not dead like Magnussen’s but empty, without soul, and not even proposing to Mary did change anything about it. He knows that John needs him in his life, needs the adventure and the thrill of the chase, the temptation to dart from the surgery into 221B, leaving behind his GP identity like his white coat.   
But this is the only thing John needs from him. Now he will have a family, something Sherlock cannot provide. He has taken enough, two years of John’s life, giving him new lines in his face and grey hair instead. This is something he may never take from John.   
On the other hand, there is this nagging fear. Will John ever be safe with her? Will there be people from her past, chasing her, finding her buried deeply in suburbia with her doctor husband and child? Will they take their revenge by killing her? Or taking her baby? Or even … no, he must not think about that.   
He swallows, pacing frantically in front of the windows. This is going to be hard, very hard, even harder than the fucking speech and that was a tough one. But he could always rely on his mind, on his big fucking brain, and he will put it to good use. He remembers half-forgotten deductions about different scenarios, how he used to play through various possibilities until he found the only one that made sense. This is what he is going to do.   
He takes his gild-edged, leather-bound notebook and a pen and carefully writes down a heading, underlines it for the sake of importance.  
Scenario 1  
John has chosen Mary, they are going to be a family soon. Therefore Sherlock must find something to exonerate Mary, to make her enormous, boundless, massive, tremendous betrayal palatable to John.   
He sets to work.   
   
When John goes home in the evening to get some hours rest, Mary is not there. He finds a note on the kitchen table:  _Sleepover at Cath’s. Girls’ night.There's lasagna in the fridge. Hope Sherlock’s better. XX Mary_  
He looks into the fridge, sees the foil-covered baking dish and closes the door again. He walks from the kitchen through into the living room, upstairs into the bedroom, feeling restless and agitated.   
In the bathroom John notices the perfume bottle on the shelf over the sink. Claire de la Lune. Moonlight.  
He sniffs the bottle, closes his eyes, tries to remember the moments in Magnussen’s office, Sherlock’s quick deductions, him going upstairs while John was tending to Janine. He remembers kneeling beside her, checking pupils and pulse, being relieved that there were no worse injuries than a mighty swelling on the back of her head. For a moment he thought he was hearing murmured voices from above, maybe Sherlock talking himself through his deductions.   
John allows himself a little smile, remembering how Sherlock used to talk even when John was not there.   
But then there was another sound – he would not have heard it except it was so quiet in the room, the penthouse floating high above the city like an untethered airship.   
A soft, popping sound, nothing more. Someone not accustomed to hearing weapons fired might not have noted it at all but John was once a soldier and he knows exactly what a silenced gun sounds like.   
This knowledge combined with the eerie silence in the room made him run to the stairs, bursting into the room – a bedroom? – and finding a cruel variation on the worst moment of his life.  
Not a pavement this time, but a carpeted floor, not a shattered head covered in blood but a red bloom on a white shirt, eyes not open but closed.   
But these differences did not really matter. This was Sherlock and he might die again. This time for real.  
John clenches his hands and puts the bottle back. He looks towards the wardrobe, shakes his head, returns to the hallway, and pulls down the ladder leading up to the attic.   
If there is something to find, he will find it up there.   
   
Assuming she was an agent/assassin once, what would Mary do? Try to minimise the threat to herself. Keep Sherlock from giving her secret away, at least for the time being. Would she dare to put a pillow on his face and smother him? Pull out the oxygen feed from his nose? No, John will surely remain at his side all the time, so a sudden death might be suspicious even under these circumstances.   
No, she will go for a verbal threat, hoping to placate him until he either dies or gets well enough to negotiate.   
No, no, no, this does not work. John must know what is going on. Come on, Sherlock tells himself, you can do better. Which is true.    
Although this is a dreaded scenario, in the end it proves to be fun. John once called him 'a drama queen' and, while Sherlock was slightly insulted in that moment, he must admit that his friend was not that far off the mark.   
Imagining boltholes in the most outrageous places and assigning them to people – Lestrade gets the boring ones, Mycroft gets the Gothic ones, greenhouse and leaning tomb. Molly, this is a bit mean but still true, gets the bedroom. Mrs Hudson gets the clock face of Big Ben, a belated comeback for her forcing him to watch a silly cartoon about a mouse detective and his obese friend.   
Next the perfume in the flat, the projector opposite the empty houses – he is very proud to have come up with those. Of course, there are no real houses there, just a 5 feet wall and a precipice with two parallel Underground tracks in it, but Sherlock lovingly furnishes his bolthole, adds a little chemistry lab and even an armchair, a bit like the one he has in his Victorian living room. And of course John, with mussed hair and upturned collar, Sherlock-style.   
Yes, this is brilliant, well done, of course it hurts like hell, but as long as he gets the work done, it is fine. All is fine. Never better.   
   
The attic is dusty and cluttered, full of  useless stuff they just put up there in the hope it would magically disappear. Did not work, though. They have been living together for less than two years and yet they have accumulated so much junk.   
John starts searching frantically through boxes, plastic bags, under heaps of old bed sheets and in a sleeping bag no one has slept in for years. He starts coughing, has to wipe tears from his eyes.   
He is eager to return to the hospital but he has to seize the opportunity. Had anyone told him only days ago that Mary being with a friend would ever become an opportunity to search his own house … but that was before.   
Before Sherlock was shot.   
Before John found him bleeding out on a floor. Again.   
He does not admit to himself what it is he is searching for. But he is sure he will recognise it the moment he finds it.   
Half an hour later he is desperate.  At his wit’s end. He has found nothing.   
He starts to descend the ladder, gripping the rungs as if there was a thousand feet drop beneath him, when he sees it.   
John starts to laugh hysterically, remembering something Sherlock once said.   
Hiding in plain sight.   
He pushes his hand into the inconspicuous leather case which is the same colour as the attic hatch and has been carefully tucked between the wood and the ladder.   
His hand closes around the pistol.   
   
He gets up, lights his pipe and starts pacing again, enacts the drama, assigns positions: Mary next to the fireplace – there is the knife, she is clever after all - Mrs Hudson in the kitchen, John in the middle of the room, seething with anger which is normal given the circumstances, himself at the door.   
Why is he at the door? This is his flat after all. But of course he has to survey the room and needs a sturdy doorframe to hold on to, especially in case your … best friend threatens to kill you again because his own wife killed you before.   
No, this is not on. He has to keep calm. They should sit down. Sitting down is good, makes talking easier and it takes the strain from a bullet wound you actually should not have run around with in the first place.   
Things will calm down. He will explain how he deduced Mary’s history, maybe Mycroft could help with that - colossal favour for hurt little brother and all that - how she did not shoot him in the head, killing him instantly, but left him a slim chance of survival which is actually quite generous. Will John buy this crap? Of course he will. Because, after having thought about it long and hard, he will realise that this is what he wants, that Mary will give him all things he ever hoped for in one person.  
A female body. Sex. Adrenaline. And a child.  
While Sherlock can only provide one of these. Well... maybe two. But this is simply not on. Not now, not ever.   
   
‘Tell me,’ John is adamant. Neither the posh interior of the Diogenes Club nor the bunker-like office can intimidate or impress him anymore. He bangs his fist on the desk, sending some papers and a half-drunk cup of tea to the floor.   
Mycroft Holmes raises an eyebrow, ‘Shouldn't you be at my brother’s side?’  
‘Shouldn’t you be at your brother’s side?’   
‘I am quite sure that Sherlock would prefer to see you when he wakes up. The hospital keeps me constantly informed about his condition, so no worry there. But from past experience I can tell you that Sherlock usually does not take well to seeing me when coming out of a –’  
‘This is not a fucking overdose! He was shot!’  
‘I assure you, John, I am may be nearing middle age but my hearing is still excellent.’  
John is breathing hard, he has to close his eyes for a moment to get his feelings under control. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’  
‘Tell you what?’   
John gulps and takes another deep breath. ‘That it was my wife who shot Sherlock.’  
For the first time Mycroft seems genuinely surprised. ‘John, I assure you –’  
‘Shut up! When we entered Magnussen’s office, Sherlock smelled a perfume. Mary wears it. And today I searched our house. Guess what I found?’  
Mycroft Holmes has naturally pale skin like most redheads have but now he looks positively ashen. ‘A gun?’  
‘Indeed. A silenced gun like the one I heard at Magnussen’s. Unloaded of course. But I am sure it was a bullet from that very gun that got stuck in your brother’s chest.’ The anger makes it almost impossible for John to continue. ‘And that got me thinking. I know, compared to you and Sherlock I am just a brainless idiot, but still. Think of an empty shell of a man, tormented by grief and guilt, drowning his misery in a bottle most evenings. He desperately tries to cling to his work if nothing else. And one day, just like that, a funny, cute nurse shows up, new part-time assistant, cheery, positive, sassy, with a kind word or a smile for even the most tedious patients. Just what the sad little doctor needs, right?’  
Mycroft has turned strangely quiet, turning a pen in his hands.   
‘She can read the sad little doctor like a book. Always the right words or plans to distract him from what is eating him from the inside. And when his detective friend, the one he mourned, suddenly returns from the dead, she becomes his friend as well. She even helps the detective to save the sad little doctor when he gets kidnapped and thrown into a bonfire. Imagine that! Because. She. Is. So. Clever. Right?’  
Mycroft raises both hands to placate but John bangs the table once again. ‘No! You are going to listen to me for once. The doctor does not even get suspicious when there is a list of people who hate her, who for some reason or other dislike the lovely nurse. Maybe he is an idiot after all but so is his detective friend. And then something happens.’   
For the first time sadness threatens to overwhelm John and dispel his anger. ‘The doctor realises that he is not happy, not happy enough for a man who just got married and will be a father. And of course, the lovely nurse sees what is happening and it pisses her off big time. And then … well. Then the lovely nurse threatens to shoot a man who has some information on her– this is at least, what I think – and the detective comes in and she shoots him first. Strange, isn’t it? Shooting someone who can fold such lovely napkins for your wedding.’  
John presses his lips together but it is too late. He feels the wetness on his cheeks, sees the shock on Mycroft’s face, and even something like shame.   
‘Do you really want to tell me the British Government himself did not know that Mary Morstan is a fucking killer?’  
   
Everything goes to plan. Well, nearly everything. He has to go hospital again, relapse due to physical exertion, prolonged recovery. How long? His head starts to hurt and he has to sit down and pull a blanket over himself because it is so very cold in here, no fire burning, just cold ashes and dust.   
Think.   
Christmas. Oh, yes, this is brilliant. Presenting his parents as the perfect married couple, teasing but in a loving way, just like...well. Do not go there. Here be dragons.  
And since Sherlock knows that Appledore is not that far from the cottage and Magnussen has a helicopter at his disposal, he could strike a deal, save Mary once and for all from the clutches of that fucking piece of … Sherlock mentally kicks away the memory that starts creeping all over him – is it a memory or a dream, Magnussen coming into his room and touching him in ways he never wanted to be touched, breaking down his boundaries – stop.   
He will strike a deal and save the world, including Mary, John, and their child, from this man.   
It is fun to meet Magnussen bare-arsed in an Italian restaurant aka the hospital canteen. Even more fun to imagine Billy Wiggins, a man he has met only once or twice, drugging his family with the Christmas punch. Outrageous, but he always gets away with the outrageous things. Drama queen all over.  
A list of things that do not work for him   
Sitting on a park bench talking about ‘feelings.’  
Hiding in a crowd on a dance-floor and pretending his heart is still in one piece.   
Tell John about … no. Not this. Not ever.   
Back to work.   
John must take his gun. He always takes his gun when there is an adventure. But Magnussen’s men will search them, like they did in Baker Street. Does not matter, he decides: this is just a scenario, nothing real, nothing anyone could ever believe. Or is it?   
Sherlock suddenly remembers the way Magnussen seemed to call up information, said he was reading. Not with the glasses, he does not think it might work. What else could it be?  
What if Magnussen was not so very much unlike himself? What if he had a mind palace of his own? Actually, this would be clever because if there were no archives or vaults in which he stores his knowledge, nobody would ever be able to steal it. His assets hidden safely in his own brain. Clever.   
Or not so clever, because in order to destroy the knowledge, one would have to destroy the brain. Oh.   
This is quite unexpected. True, there were some cases of self-defence during his time away but will he be able to shoot a man in the head, just like that, even if he was not a very nice man? So he imagines what Magnussen could do to John – threaten his wife, his child, his future.   
But he needs more, he needs a trigger, something as disgusting as the man himself. Imagine Magnussen humiliating John, hurting him, John turning to Sherlock for help because he must have a plan, he always has. Why did John choose him of all people to trust?   
So Magnussen starts flicking John’s face, belittling him, threatening to tear his future to shreds, enticing him to let it happen for Mary’s sake.  
This is enough. Sherlock thinks he can do it, he really can. And he does.   
   
John walks back to the hospital, wearing himself out in order to overcome his anger. He feels slightly dizzy, his head is pounding, he can fell sweat trickling down his back. His fingernails biting into the flesh.  
He feels humiliated, laughed at, despised, belittled.   
He remembers Sherlock telling him how Mary spotted the skip code in the text message, how she went to Baker Street, how she made Sherlock save John from the fire. How Sherlock praised her while Mary seemed strangely silent about the whole incident.   
And even earlier, the remark about the confidante, a word he would never use himself. A word for spies and agents and people who work undercover, in a world of darkness and deceit.  
And Mycroft Holmes? He kicks away an empty plastic bottle, nearly hitting a child on a scooter.   
John does not pay attention to the scowling grandmother, walks faster, concentrating on his hatred and nothing else.   
He remembers the look of shame on Mycroft’s face. Was he ashamed about his own stupidity, or his lack or care in placing Mary Morstan in John Watson’s life?  
   
There is always a downside to saving John Watson.   
The first time, it meant going away for two years, coming back and realising he would not be getting his old life back. The landscape had shifted, people were not what they had been before. Maybe he should have stayed away for good.  
Sherlock tries to get back to the Victorian living-room with its cold fireplace but somehow he has got stuck.   
Stuck in a clean little cell with nothing to stimulate his brain, not even drugs – although he might give it a try, tell the warden with the Financial Times in his pocket about that big upcoming Government contract for this IT company in exchange for a little favour –   
Yes, the downside. The downside is that he is alone, locked up with his brain and his feelings and memory of a man falling backwards – not him, not this time, bullet to brain, not the chest, dead as a doornail.   
And then Mycroft is there. Sherlock hates being with him in the confined little cell, hates being the target of his compassion, hates being the small brother who has to be comforted over and over again.   
And yet.  
Mycroft offers him a way out, a bleak one, for sure, but everything is better than getting life for murder. So he agrees.   
What follows, is hell. Sherlock knows that this is not real, just a film playing in his head, and yet it is hell. (Because something like this could come to pass. Mary is a killer and John is married to her and Mycroft never did anything to prevent this.)   
He is standing with John on a lonely tarmac, Mary a red dot in the background, a sombre Mycroft at her side, a private jet waiting to take him away …  
For a moment he allows himself to think that he might say it now, before it is too late, before he will never be able to say it. And stops. He stops before the words leave his mouth and goes for a joke. Tries to leave John with a laugh on his face.   
He knows it would not work, John would feel something was amiss, but he would accept it stoically like a soldier. And Sherlock will clench his teeth until his jaw hurts, enter the plane, wait until they are in the air, get out his phone and read about the day they met.   
(Distant voices, beeping sounds, feet moving around, but only from far, far away, from a place that slowly fades, becoming mute again.)  
   
‘What is happening? His fever is not that high.’ John is looking at Gemma Wood,the consultant, mid-thirties, red hair, pageboy hairstyle, competent and nice, pointing at the heart monitor with its spiking line.   
She shakes her head. ‘Nothing physical, John.’ She has started to call him by his first name as if they were friends. Or colleagues. Which they are not but he is willing to let it pass for now. She walks around the bed, checks the IV lines, and turns back to look at him. ‘You told me about this thing he does, this technique. Mind Castle or something like that?’  
He nods his head. ‘Palace.’ Vaguely remembering an underground lab, talking to a scientist whose daughter had lost her glowing rabbit, the scientist wondering about the pompous choice of words.   
‘Being shot comes as a shock, physically as well as mentally. Tell me about his state before this happened.’  
John swallows. He told her about the drugs so this is not what she is getting at. But what else could it be?  
‘John, please. Why did he take the drugs? Was he in some sort of distress? Did he feel ill before he was shot? Did he behave in a strange way?’  
The laughter is as involuntary as inevitable. She looks at him inquisitively.   
‘If you knew Sherlock, you would not ask this. He always behaves in a strange way, it is his default.’  
‘John, you keep evading my questions.’  
He turns around and walks to the window, leaning lightly against the cool glass. ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this outside? He might be able to hear us.’  
They are sitting in a little overstuffed office, teacups between them on the table.   
The first words are difficult, John is not really good at talking about this stuff. Feelings. Regrets. Hopes. Fears. But suddenly a dam breaks, giving way to a flood that does not stop until it has run itself dry.   
Gemma listens to him, interrupting him not even once, sitting there quietly, hands folded in her lap, head slightly tilted to the right.  
When he is finished, she leans back. ‘I see. So what you are telling me is this: Sherlock pretended to commit suicide and left London for two years in order to dismantle a criminal network. He came back and found his former life had irrevocably changed. You had moved out of the flat you shared, taken on a job in a surgery, and met a woman. You married this woman. Sherlock was your best man and did everything in order to ensure you had an unforgettable wedding. On the evening of the same wedding, he left without saying a word. You did not see him for the weeks that followed, until you found him in a drug den, on the morning of the day he was shot in the chest during an investigation. Is this the gist of it?’  
John nods his head. Remembers all the things he left out, he could not tell her – dancing in the darkened living room, putting his hand on Sherlock’s knee in front of the fireplace, hugging him for the first time in his life, feeling the tension in Sherlock’s body –   
‘ … away?’  
‘What? Sorry, I got distracted for a moment.’  
‘Do you know what happened to him during the years he was away?’  
John shrugs. ‘He never told me. Chasing thugs, I would say. Solving cases in exotic places. Things like that.’  
She gets up. ‘Come with me.’  
They enter Sherlock’s room. His heart rate is back to normal, the breathing even, his fever not alarmingly high.   
She puts her hands gently on Sherlock’s left shoulder and hip and slightly turns him to the right.  
‘Do you know about these? There are more, all over his back.’  
John closes his eyes.   
   
No! Something is wrong. Sherlock slaps his cheeks to rouse himself from his self-pitying trance. Think, he tells himself frantically, just think!  
His brain must have turned to mush during his two years of being dead.   
How probable does it seem that a woman like Mary Morstan chose to become a nurse and accidentally got a job in the same surgery as John Watson, friend and flatmate of a deceased consulting detective – the only one in the world (that’s me, by the way, hello) younger brother of the most powerful man in Britain, only antagonist of Jim Moriarty, the most dangerous spider in the web? According to his estimate the probability is virtually zero.   
Think, he urges himself, imagining the plane flying eastwards, taking him away from England and John Watson forever.   
The Woman faked her death. He himself faked his death. So what if – the roof, the shot, the blood and brain matter, he never checked his pulse, assumption instead of assurance …   
And then he creates the video.   
   
John Watson is not given to self-hatred but there are exceptions. Like the moment when Gemma shows him the scars on Sherlock’s back. Very visible, medical treatment probably came too late for neat scarring, maybe infected as well.   
He swallows. Before the fall – he still finds it hard to think of that time, to dress the unspeakable in simple words – he had seen Sherlock’s naked back more than once. No scars then. No new injuries since his return last November, he would have noticed. So it must have happened in between, during what John called, as he now shamefully remembers, ‘playing hide and seek’.   
Nothing could be further from the truth and yet Sherlock did not contradict him.   
‘So you didn’t?’ Gemma’s voice is soft.   
He shakes his head. ‘No. He did not tell me and I … you know … we once have been close but this was before he … went away.’  
Of course she knows Sherlock’s story, just as everyone who is not exactly living under a rock does.   
‘I see. These scars were probably caused by violent beatings and not treated appropriately or in time. But surely you can see that for yourself. So at some point Mr Holmes has been the victim of one or several attacks. The fact that the scars are only on his back indicates that he had been constrained in some way which, in turn, indicates that he must have been a prisoner. Probably not in a British prison since to my knowledge torture has been forbidden for quite some time.’   
John nods, lost for words. Sherlock being shot is bad enough. But to learn that he has been the subject of violence, probably torture, is unbearable.   
‘And you think …’ he has to start again, his voice sounding strangely hoarse, ‘you think that all this might have caused this condition?’  
She nods her head towards the door and they leave the room. They find an empty niche with some plastic seats and sit down opposite each other.   
‘John, may I ask you a question?’  
‘Yes.’   
‘What exactly is your relationship with Sherlock Holmes?’  
   
Sherlock feels how his scenario is slowly slipping from his grasp. He realises that this is not about saving the Watson marriage any longer. He has to go deeper. There must be a connection between Mary and other people, people who know him and John, who are moving in the dark, stealthily - _for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face-to-face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known._  
Where did this come from? He is not a religious man but his parents took him to church and at school they used to read the Bible; and sometimes Scripture is surprisingly to the point.   
He dreams himself into the past: a time in which there is good reason for him and John to not share a flat because people might talk, for him and John to be friends and nothing more, a time in which John will be married and Sherlock will be a confirmed old bachelor.   
He digs up a case bearing some similarities to Moriarty’s death on the roof, someone firing a gun and faking their death and later dying again, Scotland Yard baffled...as always. It is full of Gothic drama, blood-red mouths, a cross-dressing Molly Hooper and a Mycroft the size of a mountain made of port wine jelly. It is fun and yet he feels himself slipping, his mind grasping wildly and finding nothing but water running through his hands.   
He imagines a nightly conversation with John in a greenhouse – nice one, there is the glass again, through a glass, darkly – and lets John ask him the questions he has always wanted to be asked and has wished to hear for so long and yet, on hearing them, he loses heart and evades the answer.   
‘What made you like this?’  
‘Like what?’ he should have answered. ‘Like a freak, an automaton, a sociopath, what do you really mean?’  
And his Mind Palace John would have said: ‘Lonely, unhappy, withdrawn. Denying yourself what others have: love, romance, partnership.’  
But then there is a dog barking and a light moving in the courtyard and the moment is gone.   
What follows is a jumbled melodrama: shattered glass, shadows of a bride, a member of the gentry stabbed with a dagger, a message to himself.   
Miss me?  
   
If he knew the answer to Gemma’s question, John would not be in a situation like this.   
He licks his lips, tries to find an honest answer. ‘I am not sure. You see, with Sherlock everything’s different. He is not like …’ He shrugs helplessly.   
She leans towards him, speaks in a low, very soft voice. ‘I have watched you since he was admitted. A lot. It is my job to observe the environment of our patients, their family and friends and how they react to an illness or injury. Because this is important for the healing process and … other things but I do not have to tell you this.’   
He knows what she is talking about: telling patients and their loved ones that there is no hope left.  ’I have seen friends in such situations, close friends as well, and believe me, I can tell the difference. I do not wish to lessen the meaning of friendship but if someone is truly in love with a patient,  I can see it. Always.’  
He swallows. ’And you think I am?’  
‘Of course you are, John. I get the feeling that there are unspoken things between you and Sherlock and that it might be helpful if you talked to him.’  
He looks up, knowing that his whole heart is mirrored in his face. ‘And if it is not?’  
‘Sometimes it takes a leap into the unknown. Uncharted waters. Paths you have not walked before.’ She laughs, slightly embarrassed. ‘Now look at me, waxing poetical while I should have been on to the next ward twenty minutes ago.’  
She gets up and looks over her shoulder. ‘Think about it. There is no immediate danger but I would really, really like him to wake up.’  
   
Jim Moriarty. In his flat. Talking the usual sexualised rubbish and blowing his brains out just like he did on the roof, presenting a crater-like hole in the back of his head, still very much alive …   
Sherlock feels his control slipping, reality bleeding through, no, not 'real' reality but John is there and Mary and Mycroft, and the only thing that matters is the feeling, no, the certainty that there must be a connection between his brother and the woman known as Mary Morstan. Probably not her real name. Not fictitious either, the closer to reality, the better, so a name taken from a gravestone perhaps. He would not put it past her. Nice touch of old-fashioned spy dramas, flickering black and white images, accompanied by dramatic music.   
Then he is back in the past, in his Victorian sitting room, his mind mirror of 221B. He conjures up John to pull him from his drugged slumber on the floor. John who is disappointed and angry, demanding Sherlock to be better than he truly is. Painting him in a shining light for his magazine stories.   
He always wanted to be good for John. And failed, spectacularly.   
Something changes, a telegram from Mary. This is not the way this is meant to go but he cannot help himself. He is trusting her again, coming to her aid, saving her from an imagined danger while all the time she has been working with Mycroft behind his back – where does this come from? Is he still feeling guilty over hurting John that much? Still wishing for John to find happiness in normal life? But why does he want to push John towards a woman who is still keeping things from him, who is still a question mark? Who...  
He shakes his head and lights his pipe again, closes his eyes, lets himself sink into the chair.   
Deeper, deeper, he has to go deeper still. He finds himself in an abandoned church, there is a crypt with flickering candles. Mary has led him to Moriarty dressed up as a bride, nice touch - it is burning his heart out - this is what Moriarty threatened to do from the very beginning and what he never managed but Mary, Mary did, well, not quite, he is not dead, not yet … And then everything merges MaryBrideLadyCarmichaelMoriarty, always Moriarty, following him even to the very deepest levels of his subconscious …  
   
John sits down beside the bed again. He puts his tea mug on the nightstand and takes a deep breath. Then he covers Sherlock’s right hand, which is still too warm but not in an alarming way, with his own. This is something he has never done before, and it seems strangely intimate, and yet so very right.   
John finds himself talking.   
‘Sherlock, I just realised we only hugged once. Once in all these years. Which is weird because best friends hug each other all the time. It is something you do, when saying hello after some time or to congratulate someone on a new baby or a new job or when your team has scored a goal or to comfort your mate when life is shit. But with us, it was different.  And you know what? It was me who did not want it, who shied away from it. Never you. You kept touching my arm to alert me to things, had me dig your phone out of your breast pocket or leant closely over my shoulder to have a look at the laptop. You were the one who took my hand when we were running away from the police. It was always me who tried to keep his distance. Because I was afraid of people talking, of maybe feeling something I did not want to feel, of giving myself away’- he laughs sadly- ‘you know, I enjoy sex. Very much and as often as possible. But intimacy, well that’s another matter.’   
He absently strokes Sherlock’s hand.  ’Some girlfriends complained about it. Sorry for bringing this up’- he clears his throat- ‘what I want to tell you is this...’ His eyes have started to burn and he sits there, still stroking Sherlock’s hand and then he can feel the wetness on his cheeks.   
‘I touched you when you came back, right? Throwing you to the floor, hands around your throat, my fist in your face, my head … giving you what I thought you deserved.’ The bitterness is threatening to engulf him. ‘You know what you deserved? A punch to the face, and then a hug. But you only got one half of the deal.’  
   
There are voices, light shining into his eyes, a sort of hospital and John is there, Mycroft, Mary hovering in the background. But no, this is not right, he has things to do, he is not finished yet. Then everything is getting blurry again, a car, a cemetery with old trees and leaning gravestones.   
Sherlock tries to make sense of his story, to keep to the scenario as planned but he is unable to hold down the memories any longer. Memories and suspicions and the one fear he never dared to voice, not even to himself, not even alone in his bed, at night.   
John leaving him to his work, going home with Mary, not taking seriously what he does anymore, not being interested in Sherlock’s cases. And the cases are all he is. A hollow man dressed in adventures and a good coat.   
After John and Mary are gone, he starts digging desperately, helped by Greg – yes, he knows his name after all – who is always there when he needs someone to lend him a hand with manual labour, and Mycroft shining a light into a grave conjured up from a cheap period horror drama.   
There must be something there, this is not the whole story, Mary and Moriarty and Mycroft, there must be a link, a connection which he must find, and then everything will make sense.   
He goes deeper still. Free fall. Landing hard on wet rock. A roaring waterfall behind him, the spray soaking him instantly.  
   
Sherlock is not moving, the tea has gone cold but John cannot bring himself to stop. Now that he has begun to talk, he will not stop until everything is said.   
‘I was so angry when you waltzed into that restaurant, playing a French waiter, for God’s sake, after having put me through hell for two years. I was as good as dead myself, worse than after Afghanistan, worse than before I met you because I had met you and I knew what my life could be like and that it was over and would never come back.  
‘There is this old Eurythmics' song, ‘Better to have lost in love than never to have loved at all.’ Bit cheesy, but I could not keep it out of my mind, playing it in my head for months on end. Of course it was not exactly about us, the person lost is still alive in that song, but it comes quite near. Was having had you in my life, and losing you, better than not having had you at all? Or would it have been easier if I had never met you and just found someone else or put the gun to my head one night and ended it all?’  
These are things John has never told anyone, has not even dared to voice while being alone.   
He lets Sherlock’s hand go and buries his face in his hands, scrubbing away unshed tears.   
‘Do you know why I was so angry that evening? Come on, you are the cleverest man in the room, tell me. Because it was not just two years grieving you, feeling lost, getting drunk, talking to a headstone- that was quite appalling by the way and I really hope you did not choose that one yourself, but my bet is on Mycroft, just to spite you. Anyway’- he laughs- ‘by now it seems funny but then I was so fucking angry, because of all moments you could have chosen, you chose this. The moment I thought I was over you, the moment I had decided to move on, the moment I was sitting there with a woman who had caught me when I was stumbling around in the dark.   
‘That night I lay in bed, Sherlock, wide awake, thinking of you. My whole brain kept circling around one question. Why now? Why not a year before? Or even six months? Why not before Mary? You see, I am not a good man. A good man would have been happy to have his best friend back and a lovely woman at his side. But I was not happy after that day’ - he hesitates- ‘although this is not quite true. There were some happy moments. The moment I touched your knee in front of the fireplace. The moment you put your arm on the headrest behind me when we were sitting on the couch. The moments you taught me how to dance in our living room. Closed curtains, I know, but still. And when we hugged at the wedding. The collection of John Watson’s Happy After-The-Fall-Moments is quite small but it is precious to me. And you know what? There is not a single moment with my wife in it.’  
   
This is rock bottom. He smiles at his own pun. Lying on the hard, wet ground, clothes soaked to the bone, attacked by his own weakness and fear and inability to overcome that very fear. He realises that he has never really fought against a man, but always against himself. He let himself be lured into the game, was flattered to be the object of such an intricate plan, such a work of beauty. Crimes made to measure, puzzles only he could solve.   
When he realised what Moriarty had become, a part of himself, it was too late. He realised it the moment he saw Moriarty’s face in Dewer’s Hollow, triggered by a drug that showed Sherlock his own worst fears. A bit like a fairytale, a counterpart of the Evil Queen’s mirror. How fitting. Moriarty was always one for fairytales.   
And then he knows it is over. He made a mistake, again, meeting his deepest fears alone, without someone at his side. He should not have started this experiment on his own, should have talked it through with John but no –   
There is the wife to be considered.   
Sherlock is fading away, he cannot fight the vicious attack any longer, he is close to giving up, to fall again, once and forever, never to come back again. There is a pain in his chest, the bullet wound, Moriarty hitting him in the very place, a breath-taking pain and then –  
John is there. There is always two of them.   
For a moment Sherlock allows himself the impossible dream of John coming to save him, of John throwing Moriarty over the edge and Sherlock throwing away his stupid hat – the How People Want To See Him hat - and jumps into a new life.   
He awakes on the plane. Mary is there. Mary is pregnant. Why was she not pregnant in his Victorian escapade? He made a mistake there, surely, because she is pregnant now and he deduced it himself, he is not stupid, all the signs were there – as was the sign of the liar and yet he did not observe as he should have done.   
A last desperate attempt at getting back the happiness, placing John and himself in their beautiful Victorian attire in front of the fireplace, smoking, chatting peacefully, perfectly intimate, him walking to the window and looking out and seeing – the present. The present in which Mary is pregnant and has shot him and John does not know about his wife and Mycroft cannot be trusted and –  
   
The heart monitor is beeping, the ECG spiking, Sherlock’s hands suddenly twitching, his head rolling from left to right.   
John is up from his chair, leaning over the bed, putting his hands on Sherlock’s face and trying to calm him down but it is no use. Gemma and a nurse are entering the room, checking everything, Sherlock’s temperature which is only slightly elevated- no fever- and yet something is happening to him.   
‘I ... I talked to him as you said. He has been quiet all the time, this started only seconds ago,’ John says, feeling terribly awkward. Was it something he said that upset Sherlock? Did he hear him? Did he hear everything he said?  
Gemma sends the nurse away. ‘I do not care if you have been pouring out your heart to him or read from the telephone directory,’ she smiles. ‘Whatever you did, you got a reaction. And even if he reacted to something inside himself instead of your words, this is a good sign.’ She looks over to the heart monitor. The heart rate is slowing down.    
‘No medication as long as his condition remains stable.  Keep up the good work.’  
She leaves him alone.   
   
They are driving into a tunnel, Sherlock and John in the front seats, Mary in the back, moaning, telling him to go faster, then a cry, ‘Stop! At once! I cannot … fuck … my water just broke …’  
He abruptly stops the car, sends it slithering against the kerb, John jumping out and squeezing himself in the back with Mary.   
Sherlock is trying not to hear the moans, the groans, Mary swearing, John talking to her in his best bedside manner, hiding his own nervousness because his daughter is going to be born in a fucking car in a fucking London tunnel, of all things.   
Sherlock looks at his phone, trying to distract himself because he knows what this means, he will never have John, not the way he wants him, he will be the uncle coming to tea every second Sunday of the month, bringing funny presents for which John’s daughter is far too young, carrying her around the room in a mixture of awkwardness and pride and then going home to Baker Street alone.  
There is some shark graffiti in the tunnel and he thinks of Magnussen and that he is not sorry, will never be sorry for killing him, but why are they here of all places, what are they telling him?  
After that everything starts to blur, a jumble of images floating through his brain, John and Mary and the baby in a lovely, pink bunny suit and they all take a walk like a happy family, Mr and Mrs Psychopath and their high-functioning uncle dragged along by an over-eager dog into a crowded market and –  
   
‘Sherlock, I need you to wake up. Please. I know you suffered a terrible shock and you are in pain but please, for me.’   
John is holding Sherlock’s right hand that has no venous access with both of his own, maybe even clutching it but he cannot let go, he is afraid. He is a doctor and should be able to keep his professional distance but this is Sherlock.   
‘I could say sorry and explain why I have been the way I am and that this is not how I want us to be but I know that you are not fond of sentimental crap so I will start again. I need you to wake up because I have a case for you.’   
   
At first there is just light. Nothing hard or glaring, more like the sun shining through mist, soft, subdued, muted.   
Then there is a sound, a voice. He knows that voice, he could pick it out of a hundred, a thousand, of all other voices.   
‘A very important case, Sherlock, and I want you to listen to me. I know who shot you. This is all I have to say for now,’ a pause, ‘and there is something else. I promised to skip the sentimental crap so I will keep it short. I have no idea if you can hear me or if you even want to hear this but, just this once. Let me say it, just once. I love you.’  
   
John feels a sudden calm after he has said the words. It is as if he has shed an old skin, like a lizard or a snake, only to find a shining new skin beneath. A skin in which he feels at home.  
At first it is just a twitch, feather-light, so light that it could be his imagination. But then Sherlock’s hand starts to move in his and he loosens his grip and looks down at the long fingers that are scrabbling about.   
‘Sherlock? Can you hear me?’ John looks at the monitors, everything is fine. Pulse almost normal.   
He starts to stroke Sherlock’s hand again and keeps his eyes on Sherlock’s face. Lips starting to move, trying to form words.  
‘Just a sec, I’ll be back at once.’  
John runs out into the hallway, barges into the nurses’ station, shouting for ice.   
‘Mr Holmes is awake?’ asks a young nurse. ‘I will page Doctor Wood at once.’  
But John is already on his way back, nearly slithering into the room, shutting the door and bending down over the bed.   
Sherlock’s eyes are open. Slightly unfocussed. Lips still moving. John carefully places an ice cube against Sherlock’s lips. He hesitantly licks the cube, water slowly dripping down over his chin and John’s fingers. One minute, two minutes. Then he turns his head away.   
John sits down, putting the bowl of ice on the nightstand.   
‘Can you hear me?’  
   
Sherlock manages a nod. His brain is still fuzzy; he is floating on a cloud of morphine but he is awake. His mouth is still terribly dry but he has to try.   
‘Too.’  
His mouth does not obey, his lips are numb and it feels as if he has to learn to speak again.   
John’s face is very close. ‘You don’t have to speak. Everything is fine, the operation went well, they removed the bullet without any damage to blood vessels or other organs. But you lost a lot of blood and have been unconscious for two days.’  
His voice is just a whisper, ‘Mary?’  
John’s lips turn into a hard line. ‘This is the case I mentioned, the case for which you have to get well.’  
‘He has … things … on her.’  
‘Who has?’  
‘Magnussen.’ Sherlock closes his eyes, exhausted from a few short words.   
‘Magnussen is dead, Sherlock.’  
He tries to move but the pain in his chest is excruciating even through the morphine cloud and he has to take some shallow breaths. Another ice cube is placed to his lips. A warm, dry hand is stroking his forehead.   
‘He was killed in his office. I found both of you. Him, I could not save. Shot to the head. But you … well, the killer had second thoughts,’ he swallows, ‘and yet, you almost died, Sherlock, it was touch and go. I think they had given up on you.’   
He looks away.   
   
John tries very hard not to cry in front of  Sherlock, ’lets talk about this when you are better’ - he gets up from his chair- ‘I will look for Gemma, your doctor. She will be happy to know you woke up. You gave us a right puzzle.’   
Sherlock looks at him quizzically.   
‘There was no physical reason why you should remain unconscious for so long.’  
Something like a smile appears on Sherlock’s face. ‘Other reason.’  
John nods. ‘I see. Trip to the palace?’  
‘Yes.’ Sherlock’s voice is low and tired but not without a hint of amusement.   
John gets up and walks to the door. His hand is already touching the doorknob when something makes him stop abruptly in his tracks.   
‘I heard you.’  
He almost runs back to the bed. Sherlock is looking at him with wide open eyes.  
‘I love you, too.’  
    
   
**Love never fails.  
(1 Corinthians 13)**  
 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Would love to hear from you. :)


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